Cabin Fever
by humblequill
Summary: Written for rumpelgold's prompt: Emma and Gold are trapped in the cell together. One-shot.


Written from a prompt from rumpelgold on tumblr. Hope you enjoy this little Golden moment!

I don't feel like I can just leave Gold here overnight. The way he's sitting so quietly in that little cell creeps me out. I should have clocked off a half-hour ago, but something stops me every time I make to get up. So I keep looking at my evening edition of the Mirror, pretending I haven't noticed the time.

"Sheriff."

Crap. Just as I was going to try and leave again. I look up and he's standing at the bars, watching me. I rise from the desk, approaching him.

"What can I do you for?"

He skews one side of his mouth awkwardly.

"I was hoping you'd let me use the private bathroom. I don't fancy this one."

I follow his gaze to the greasy-looking urinal in the far corner of the cell that I have not yet had the bravery to approach. Suddenly I don't 'fancy' him having to use it either, else the memory stays with me forever.

"Sure." I unhook my keys. "You got four minutes before I leave for the night."

"Much obliged."

I pull back the Yale lock and open the door, swinging it open. Gold approaches me coolly, makes his way past to the bathroom. I let him limp away. He turns to look at me for a moment.

"You're not going to stand on armed guard outside the door."

The humour drips from his voice and he smirks. I look down at the lame leg he's clutching.

"What're you gonna do? Run away?"

The smirk falls away. He enters the bathroom, the door clicks behind him. And so I wait. Check my watch. Toss my keys up and down a little. In the middle of lining up a catch he re-emerges. The keys drop to the floor.

Tears.

Well that's new.

"Are you okay?"

"Fine," he insists, barging past and back into his cell.

"But you're crying."

I really didn't mean to say it, but the words sort of fell out of my mouth.

"I washed my eyes."

There's a low tone to his voice that worries me, like something's been building, all this time in the little cell. I've seen people go to pieces when I used to catch up to them with bail-bonds, when isolation forces them to face the thoughts they've been avoiding.

In the cell Gold sits himself down on the bench, picks up the little teacup that manifested after Regina's visit. I haven't really had the gall to ask yet.

I stand at the cell door, leaning on the open frame.

"Does this have something to do with your teacup?"

He doesn't answer. Against any kind of better judgement, I enter the cell. He looks up at me, and then at the door, and then a strange wide eyed look comes over him. He reaches out speechlessly, panicked, and I look back to the cell door.

To see it slam shut behind me.

The click of the Yale lock is horrifyingly real. I shake the door. Nothing. I reach for the keys that are not there on my hip. I see those keys glinting at me from the floor a few feet away.

Gold is beside me, reaching out for them fruitlessly, and then lying down on the floor to get at them. They are a fingertip away. I drop down beside him, reaching just in case my arms are any longer, but of course they aren't. We stop reaching at the same time, lying together on the dusty floor of the cell.

He's facing me, seething with annoyance. I feel the embarrassment rising inside.

"So… I guess I'm not clocking off."

"Evidently."

He grits his teeth, and at this closeness I notice a dried tear on his cheekbone. Washing his eyes my ass.

He turns onto his back on the floor, sighing deeply. "I suppose it's too much to expect that you have your cell or your radio?"

I resent the tone, but it's not completely undue.

"They're on the desk."

I can see the radio from here. Suddenly the desk seems a long way away.

"So we just have to wait for someone to come in… and they can pass me the keys."

My attempt at an optimistic tone only causes Gold to close his eyes.

"Smashing. Let's hope Mayor Mills isn't the first to revisit."

I feel a sinking feeling in my stomach at the thought. I sit up, taking stock of the situation. I look down at Gold, who suddenly seems more human than usual.

"So, we were talking about your teacup?"

He opens his eyes, looks up at me.

"No," he corrects, "You were talking about my teacup, I was ignoring you."

Charming.

"Well you're not ignoring me now, so spill. What's so important about it? You got yourself arrested for that thing."

He takes a glance over at the cup where it sits on the bunk.

"It holds value."

"Uh-huh." I take on my best tone of disbelief. "And it has nothing to do with the girl?"

"What girl?"

"The one you were beating the crap out of the florist about."

"Oh. That girl."

"Uh-huh."

Gold sits up, yanking himself up onto the bench. His bad leg shakes under him like it's going to give. I reach out, grabbing the back of his calf. He steadies.

His "Thank you" is barely even a whisper.

He steps slowly out of my grip, turns himself around on the bench, shifting the cup along as he sits beside it.

"Do you ever wish, sometimes, that you had a potion that would just make you… forget?"

The question throws me, but answers surface relatively quickly.

"Well sure," I say, getting up. "I'd like one that had specific… focal points."

I sit down beside him.

"Oh yeah?" He says with a sad laugh.

"Men," I clarify. "There's plenty of them I'd like to forget."

"Like Graham?"

I look at him, and I realise the question is no quip, no attack. His eyes are curious, searching my face.

"Sure. I mean, only sometimes. Because then there were moments that were… great, you know. And I wouldn't want to erase those."

Gold picks up the cup, turns it in her hands. He nods.

"I feel the same about her." He holds the cup up to his eyeline.

"What was her name?"

He pauses, considering me I guess.

"I called her Belle."

That's almost cute. And it's most certainly obscure, coming from Gold. It gives me a certain awkwardness to hear his sincerity, but it's times like these when I almost want to trust him again.

He puts the cup down under the bench, tucks it safely away. Then he looks at me, and he wears a flat sort of smile.

"So she's…"

"Dead, yes."

"And Moe French?"

"Her father."

"Oh."

And we're back to the creepy feeling. But now it's a sad-creepy, and I'm not all that good at feeling it with him sitting so close by.

"She must've been… um… pretty young."

He nods. "About your age, I believe."

I try to ignore the creepy tingling feeling that emerges, focusing instead on the sad part as hard as I can.

"That's young to die."

He just nods, still looking at me with that empty look. Then his head falls, and he takes in a sharp breath.

It feels weird, but the urge to put my hand on his knee is overpowering. I try to think of Mary Margaret, and how she'd try to comfort someone. I reach out, see my own hand shaking as it rests on his leg. Damn. Kinda missed the knee.

He doesn't flinch at the touch like I thought he would, instead something even weirder happens.

He puts his hand on mine.

And he's warm.

I don't know why it should be so weird, why I thought his touch would be colder. I try to keep my hand still on his leg. There's a light pressure on it, and I'm loathe to say it comforts me a little.

"Well I can't offer a potion," I say, trying to break the strangely intimate silence that's fallen between us. "But I recommend whiskey for forgetting."

He nods. His grip on my hand is a little firmer.

"Pity there's none to hand."

"Again, it's in the desk."

"Bottle at work?" He asks with a chuckle. "Have you considered you might have a problem?"

I laugh too, and things feel more okay.

"I've considered it, sure."

Gold breaks his chuckle into a smile. His eyes glitter.

"I can think of another way to forget."

His shifts closer, and the hand that's on his leg slips further up. I yank it away, but he catches me, holds me gently at the wrist. And then he lets go, most deliberately.

It's creepy-tingly again. And the tingly's taking over.

Gold shifts again, eyes black and deep and suddenly close. He stills wears that odd, sparkling smile.

He touches my face so lightly that I don't think I'd know if I couldn't see his hand moving. And he's right, I am forgetting, because I don't know how this started, or why we're here. I'm not rightly sure that we're even still in the cell. All I see is the dark depths of his eyes.

And then I see nothing as my eyes fall shut.

The kiss is like nothing I could have imagined from the impeccably measured Mr Gold. His lips are pressured and needy, and I can feel his breath heaving like he wants to open his mouth. His body's easy to fall into, and I feel him gripping my sides as he drops us down onto the bench. We land abruptly, and my mouths drops open with the impact.

And he's on it.

It's unbearable to think that this is wrong, that I should pull away, because he tastes like ice-cream and tears and passion. And his body underneath me feels better than it should. Everything feels better than it should.

We break for breath, and I see him beneath me, and the urges flow furious and free. Now this isn't awkward. I know how to do this.

"Take your clothes off," I say.

He just grins.

"I… I'd really rather you didn't."

I jump up onto my feet as the small voice echoes me back to reality. Gold lies there still, but he too is craning for the source of the voice.

Mary Margaret stands just a few feet away, holding my keys.


End file.
